Eavan Aisling Boland was born September 24, 1944, in Dublin, Ireland. The daughter of Frederick H. Boland, a diplomat, and Frances Kelly, a painter, Boland grew up in Dublin, London, and New York City. In 1966, she graduated with honors from Trinity College in Dublin, where she later was a lecturer in the English department. From the late 1960s through the late 1980s, Boland worked as a cultural journalist, writing reviews for the arts section of the Irish Times and other publications. Since the 1980s, Boland has taught at several colleges in the United States and Ireland, including Bowdoin College, Washington University, University College Dublin, and Stanford University. Since 1995, she has been the Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities and director of the creative writing program at Stanford.

In 1967, Boland published a collection of poems titled New Territory. Boland has since published ten poetry collections...